No, I don't know what's up with me, either.I haven't been writing recently, at all. Just nothing there. I've been reading, and listening, and looking, and skimming along the surface of my own mind, a thought water strider.
I'm not sure where all the time goes. I must have been doing--something--
And I begin again.
Stand back, said stand back!
Can't you see I've lost control
I'm getting indiscreet
You're moving in so close 'til I'm picking up, picking up
I'm getting indiscreet
You're moving in so close 'til I'm picking up, picking up
This heat, this heatGive me steam, and how you feel can make it real,
Real as anything you've seen
Get a life with the dreamer's dreamLosing my balance again, it seems. Too much to do, not enough time, too many demands.
And anger. I reclaim my anger. And I want to break free--
break free--
Hormones place me on edge, silence completes the action.
And I look up.
The smallest thing can be my redemption. Like a rain pipe that curves like a living thing and has arms that hold soil and plants. Like the moon, full in the sky. The rain washing me clean like tears.
When illusion spins her net
I'm never where I want to be
And liberty she pirouettes
When I think that I am free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me
Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going boom boom boom
"Hey" I said "You can keep my things,
they've come to take me home."And of course there is fear, my constant companion, my black dog, my bête noire.
And I spin in place.
The fear is a familiar friend. She sniffs at my hand and leans against me, familiar as the sound of my heartbeart and the song of my blood in my eardrums.
She sometimes ranges far afield. But there are times when she has been the only thing I owned, the only thing I could say was all me, and so I am still tied to her.
And I know her, her depths and her heights, and all the places I must go alone, head bowed, neck bare, stripped of all my braids and other signs of rank.
I am used to admitting that I am helpless.
It never gets any easier.
I'm not saying I'm replacing love with some other word
to describe the sacred tie that binds me to you
I'm not saying love's a plaything, no, it's a powerful word
inspired by my strong desire to bind myself to youAnd her inverse is a blood bay mare, dancing and snorting, whose mane I grab and ride, ride, ride, forever.
Who could give that up?
And I reach to the sky.
And my fear and my joy go off and play together and leave me alone.
There is no story here, none that I can tell. There is sorrow, revulsion, all of these wordless things that I usually keep buried. A sense of entrapment.
It never gets any easier.
It's never going to get any easier.
I will continue to be severely affected by the moods of those I am closest to. He and I will never have an easy time between us, because I refuse to give in and admit that we have a relationship. Because I have seen my future, and there are paths I simply refuse to set my feet upon.
Because I have had the easy pleasure of a love as rich and deep and rewarding as I could ever imagine, and i know that it is wrong to have to scrabble and scheme and deny myself for each drop of happiness that I come by. Because I want to be able to hold up my head in front of my fellows and say that I am not invisible as a queer person, that I have fought the good fight in my own way, that I waited for the right time and the right woman.
If I start dating men again, i will never come out to my parents.
That is a bald fact. A hard truth.
And I crouch low to the ground.
There is compromise here, I think. There is the possibility for something that does not go beyond my boundaries. I can't help think that this would all be so much easier if I had a girlfriend but I know it's never that simple.
"When I figured out I was a lesbian, I took a LOT of comfort and strength from the lesbian community. That community may or may not really exist in any real sense, but it felt *good*, damn it. (And still does, sometimes, even now many years later.) By coming out, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do, I felt like I'd stood up for something I believed in, something that was real to me, something I was passionate about. I don't think there is an equivalent experience for straight people. It is -- or can be -- a life-changing, mind-blowing sort of thing. I count being a lesbian as one of my favorite thnigs about myself, and the whole experience of what it felt like to recognize that I was a dyke and to come out is a big part of why."
What is a denial? What is not?
I am still resisting--
And I begin again.
